On the evening of April 18th, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa held the annual State of the City Address for Los Angeles at Paramount Studios. This year, the city hoped to connect with citizens. More specifically, with students from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to help them better understand how the mayor helps the city and even California. To make that happen, the city made plans with LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia. As a result, representatives from 36 Los Angeles high schools were able to attend the state of the city.

I had never been to an event of this magnitude in my life so I was very curious to see how the aura in the room would feel. The welcoming remarks from executive director of Move LA Denny Zane got the event going as he talked about the mayor and his confidence that the mayor would succeed with his plans to Extend Measure R, which is a program he spoke of throughout his address. As soon as he introduced Mayor Villaraigosa, the Paramount Theatre filled with clapping and cheers.

The mayor began his address in a nostalgic tone as he remembered he was first sworn into an office in 1994 in that same theatre. Most of his speech after that dealt with the improvement of transportation and the economy of Los Angeles beginning with the 30/10 Plan, which is a plan to build 30 years of a transit system in 10 years. He began to talk about Measure R, which was another plan to increase the number of transit rails throughout Los Angeles. All these plans would increase jobs in Los Angeles, which would help the economy. Within his speech, he had a little blurb about the increase of the API scores within the LAUSD district and concluded the speech with his farewell.

While the speech was taking place, I realized how much I hadn’t know about the mayor’s duties. As a citizen from Los Angeles, I had never known how the mayor helped the city, let alone the state as a whole or understood what the mayor of the city did to help Los Angeles grow and recently get Los Angeles out of the slump of the recession it has been in the last couple of years. After the mayor’s speech, it cleared up all those questions and I realized how much the mayor takes a part in creating jobs as much as the governor or even the president in Los Angeles.

By the end of the speech, everyone felt proud to be an Angeleno including me. The mayor assured that Los Angeles held nothing but promise for the next 14 months.